


Darkrian

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, I'm a Darkrai apologist, Non-human hermits - Freeform, Pokemon hermit apparently, multiplayer sleep datapack, season 7, this came out of one NCV convo months ago about the contrast between red sweater and blue eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29677050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: Bdubs doesn't like phantoms. They're scary and, if you aren't careful, deadly. Who needs 'em, anyway?It turns out that someone - or something -doesneed the phantoms. And that someone will do whatever it takes to keep Bdubs out of their business.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	Darkrian

Bdubs stepped out of a Nether portal and sucked in a nervous breath at the sight of the dark, starry sky. His trusty bed was in an ender chest, to avoid a repeat of a prior... incident, and this portal was open to the sky. He glanced around, plotting a course to the nearest shelter. Why was he the only person who ever slept around here??

Screeches sounded overhead. Bdubs flinched and started running.

He made it to shelter with no bite marks, only a near miss. This was a simple building, with nothing he could use inside, but at least it was safe. He watched out the window at the phantoms, still circling, searching for prey that was no longer there.

A shadow flashed across the moon, making Bdubs jump. That wasn’t a phantom. What was  _ that? _ Moments later, it darted past again, and a phantom vanished with a squawk. Bdubs shuddered and turned away. The phantoms were bad enough - he certainly didn’t want to meet the creature that could hunt them. When he chanced another look outside, he had a sudden feeling that he was being watched. In the shadows, he thought he could see a single, bright blue eye.

\-----

“Bdubs! Hi!!”

Bdubs turned in his stroll through the shopping district and caught Grian waving at him. “Hey G! You look pleased with yourself today.”

Grian shrugged. “Oh, you know, just a generally good day! Had a good breakfast, I suppose. I noticed we’ve had a couple nights to play with lately, where have you been?” he joked.

“Working in the Nether,” Bdubs sighed. “I must have lost track of time. I got attacked by phantoms last night! Me!! I’m never away from a bed long enough to attract phantoms!”

“I’ll say,” Grian muttered.

“What was that?” Bdubs asked.

“Nothing.” Grian smiled again, but Bdubs hadn’t missed Grian’s frustrated - angry? - look. Frustrated at Bdubs skipping nights for everyone more often than not? Or at the fact that Bdubs had missed a few?

“Well, don’t you worry,” Bdubs replied, hoping to gauge a reaction, “I won’t be missing bedtime for a little while! Those phantoms sure spooked me! There was even some new night terror swooping around hunting them - I wouldn’t want to meet whatever that was in a dark alley.”

Grian’s eyes snapped to meet Bdubs’. Bdubs took an involuntary step back at the intensity of the gaze. He had expected Grian to say something, to indicate somehow whether he was okay with what Bdubs was doing. Instead, Grian just stared. Unsettlingly. Then, abruptly, he turned and flew away. Bdubs shook his head, as if a spell had been broken, frowned, and went about his business. There had been something weird about Grian’s eyes, but Bdubs couldn’t quite place what was different. So preoccupied was he with that puzzle, that it didn’t occur to him to remember whether or not Grian had used any firework rockets to fly.

\-----

That evening, as Bdubs was lying down, waiting for the night to pass him by, his bed broke from under him. Tumbling to the ground with a yelp, he turned to see Grian, holding an ax in one hand and the bed in the other.

“Hey!” Bdubs cried. “Give it back!!”

Grian skipped out of reach as Bdubs lunged. They had gone through this song and dance before. Bdubs growled, scooted over to the nearest ender chest, and pulled out his backup bed. He glanced around warily. Grian had vanished. It wasn’t quite dark yet. Bdubs could still-

As soon as he closed his eyes, he was on the ground again. This time he managed to snatch the bed away before Grian could steal it. “HEY!!”

Grian gave him a grin that was supposed to look mischievous, but in the fading light looked sharp, almost malicious. His eyes shone. Had his eyes always been blue? Bdubs remembered them being pretty dark. Bdubs ran away, taking a zigzagging path to slow Grian down, put the bed down in the shadow of a building, and hopped in. He only needed a minute... a moment to calm down, to relax, and-

The bed was gone again.

Bdubs reached for it, but Grian was there first. Now Grian had both beds. 

“Grian, please!” Bdubs whined, taking nervous glances around. “J-just let me skip one night. There’s - there’s gonna be phantoms out soon!”

“I know.”

Grian struck a menacing figure, standing half-shrouded in shadow, the light of the just-rising moon turning his light blond hair almost white. The deep shadows strangely exaggerated the ridges in the collar of his red sweater into spikes as he turned away. “Don’t worry,” he said in an odd voice. “You’ll get the beds back in the morning.”

“Grian!”

But just like that, Grian was gone. Vanished, as though turned to shadow himself.

A pained screech drew Bdubs’ attention upward, toward the growing flock of phantoms. Whatever had been hunting them was back in the sky.

\-----

"Bdubs, everything going okay with you?"

"Is it really that obvious?" Bdubs grumbled to Etho.

Etho shrugged. "Not exactly. But I hear there's been a bed thief running amok for a few nights now. You haven't been skipping nights for us, so I figure you must be one of their victims."

"I sure am!" Bdubs asserted. "It's Grian that's been doing it! It was just fun and games for a while, but the past few days he’s gotten really intense about it! He's just causing trouble!"

"Grian?" Etho's eyebrows raised. "Interesting. The people I've talked to haven't mentioned a hermit - more of a monster, really."

"More like a phantom?" Bdubs told Etho about the shadow he had seen.

"Something like that, yeah," Etho confirmed. "A dark shape that appears out of the shadows, with white, like, hair or something-”

“So it’s actually  _ you,”  _ Bdubs interrupted jokingly, earning a laugh from Etho.

“Nah, I can be sneaky, but this is an actual shadow,” Etho clarified. “And it’s got a red thing around its neck and blue eyes.”

An image popped into Bdubs’ head of the previous night. Grian arriving seemingly out of nowhere, impossible to outrun, moonlight reflecting and changing his appearance ever so slightly... “It could still be Grian,” Bdubs realized, “somehow. What if he can shapeshift or something? What if  _ he’s _ the monster?”

“Am I, though?”

Bdubs flinched and whipped around. Even Etho looked surprised. Grian was here! Standing by the wall... as though he’d just popped out of its shadow? His eyes flashed blue. “A monster, I mean. We’ve all got to survive somehow, right?”

Bdubs shot out of his seat. Looking up, he noticed the sun setting. Grian was here for a reason. “I’ve had just about enough of you! You never did return my beds from last night and now you’re back for more!”

“Bdubs...” Etho warned. But Bdubs wasn’t about to back down. He drew his sword and pointed it at Grian.

Grian raised his eyebrows. When Bdubs actually swiped at him, Grian vanished. Bdubs staggered as his sword hit thin air. He watched nervously as a wisp of darkness separated itself from the shadow of the wall and darted across the room. Now Etho was out of his seat too, but it wasn’t clear whether he was preparing to stop Grian or Bdubs.

Grian rose from the wisp of shadow. His hair had turned to a streamer of flowing white, his hands black claws. “Don’t interfere!” he said. “Please.”

Bdubs growled and ran at him again with the sword. Grian stepped - drifted? - back slightly, surprised and a little disappointed. He sighed. “Sorry...”

Grian swept both arms outward, flinging a flurry of black orbs at the two of them. One hit Bdubs right away. It grew, surrounding him in a bubble of darkness, then popped. Bdubs slumped to the ground, unconscious, twitching and making sounds of distress. Etho ducked behind a block, but too late: an orb clipped his shoulder, and he too was engulfed.

A chorus of screeches overhead drew Grian’s attention. More phantoms than would ever normally be attracted to a player circled overhead. “Huh. Almost wish I'd done this anyway,” Grian mused. “Then I could leave them alone for longer in between...”

His shape changed further, to something shorter, shadowier. He hovered, legs disappearing under a fluttering cloak of darkness. His sweater billowed into a wide collar of red spikes. The rest of him turned black, leaving only the collar, the white plume on his head, and one glowing blue eye visible in the night. Fully transformed, he launched himself from the ground. Time to hunt.

\-----

Bdubs woke in a cold sweat. He had just had a terrible nightmare... there had been a lot to it, but he thought it started with Grian turning into a- well, he wasn’t sure what. Then he’d hit Bdubs with something...

Wait. No, that part had happened before he’d fallen asleep. That’s why he was waking up on the ground. Grian had  _ done something. _ Had he caused that nightmare somehow?

A groan caught Bdubs’ attention. He turned just as Etho opened his eyes with a gasp. Etho, one of the most unflappable men Bdubs knew, looked  _ scared.  _ “Wha...” Etho murmured as he looked around, not quite seeing, not quite awake. Finally, he came back to reality and focused on Bdubs. Bdubs' presence seemed to calm Etho significantly. “Dude, I just had the craziest dream.”

"Me too!" Bdubs cried. "Did you see that? Grian  _ attacked _ us! With some kind of sleep magic!"

"Well, you were swinging at him with a sword," Etho pointed out.

"He- he was being creepy!"

Etho gave Bdubs the exact same skeptical look that they had seen on Grian last night.

“Okay, fine,” Bdubs huffed. “So maybe I overreacted a  _ little _ bit. I’m sorry you got caught up in all this too.”

“I appreciate that,” Etho acknowledged, “but I don’t think I’m the only one to apologize to.”

Bdubs gave him a withering look. “Okay,  _ Mom,”  _ he grumbled. Etho just laughed as he watched Bdubs open his elytra and take off southward.

\-----

Grian was working somewhat casually in the mid-morning light, when he felt someone come near. He turned around. "Hi, Bdubs," he waved. "I do hope you're not here to try and kill me again."

Bdubs shook his head. "No, not this time. Look, I'm sorry about all that. I just... I was scared! I didn't know what was going on! I still don't, as a matter of fact, but pulling my sword on you wasn't necessary, I'm sure!"

Grian closed the chest he had been messing with and sat on top of it. "And I'm sorry for Dark Voiding you and Etho. It wasn't any more necessary than you brandishing your weapon was, and it had a much worse effect, didn't it?"

"'Dark Voiding'?" Bdubs echoed. "You mean that magic thing you shot at us?"

Grian nodded. He held out his hand, palm up, and above it summoned a small black orb. "One touch and you fall asleep, and while you sleep you have terrible nightmares."

"I'll say," Bdubs muttered.

Grian dismissed the magic. "It turned out to be a good thing for me last night, but the entire reason I came here is so that I wouldn't  _ have _ to cause nightmares wherever I go."

"What do you mean?" Bdubs frowned in confusion. "You've been with us in two worlds now, and I've never heard of something that  _ has _ to cause nightmares. And anyway, what makes us different from... wherever you came from?"

"Not just this world, Bdubs," Grian explained. "This... this universe. This collection of worlds. I came here because I eat nightmares. And this place has a being that is, if not the nightmares themselves, similar enough that I could hunt them instead."

"Phantoms," Bdubs realized. Grian nodded.

"I had to adapt a little to catching physical prey." Grian opened his mouth, showing off a row of jagged, sharklike teeth. "But they sustain me and taste just the same, and don't necessarily stem from human anguish. Although I discovered after our encounter yesterday that they certainly  _ can. _ That reminds me -" Grian pulled two beds out of his inventory and handed them over - "here's these back. I've had my fill for a while, and done more damage than I intended. I'll let you sleep again now - for now."

**Author's Note:**

> If I were to write a serious Pokehermit fic I would... not make this particular choice lol. I'd probably make Grian a Sableye or something. But this idea Happened, and, well, here we are. I also don't usually make the skip-night datapack canon, so don't get too used to that :P


End file.
